As Iraq faces a governmental crisis and collapses into what looks to be a three-sided civil war, Republicans even other Democrats – members of Congress and potential presidential candidates, such as President Obama’s former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – are alleging that Obama facilitated the rise of the Sunni radical group Islamic State (formerly Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). They blame him for withdrawing all U.S. forces from Iraq in 2011 and for failing to provide greater aid for moderate groups opposed to President Bashar al Assad in Syria.

Though I am no fan of President Obama, such logic is breathtakingly horrendous.
Although Americans are not known for placing importance on history, one should
expect them to at least remember a few years back. And the public seems to at
least have a vague idea that they are tired of 13 years of brushfire wars in
faraway places. However, politicians, always eager to spend soldiers’ lives
and taxpayer dollars on another interventionist fiasco, begin their history
in 2011 when Iraq’s autocratic leader, Nouri al Maliki, vetoed Obama’s conditions
for keeping American troops in that country. Somehow, these politicians argue,
the United States should have just kept a small US force in Iraq despite the
opposition, and likely hostility, of the host government. Forgetting these facts
and starting history at this point leads to a bias toward further US intervention
in Iraq (and Syria).

In fact, George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq led directly
to the creation and radicalization of what is now the brutal IS group. The group
morphed from the group al Qaeda in Iraq, which rose in resistance to the US
military intervention. Anyone familiar with the Islamic religion would be unsurprised
by the rise of such guerrilla resistance to non-Islamic foreign occupiers on
Islamic soil. Yet most American politicians, including high-level Bush administration
officials, seemed to be.

Furthermore, the current leader of the IS group, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, and
two of the three other men on the group’s military council – like many other
IS fighters – were radicalized during detention in US camps during the American
occupation. To the apparent disbelief of many American politicians of both parties,
people, even non-Islamists, rarely like having their country occupied by a foreign
invading force.

Moreover, the US military usually tries to win against insurgencies by "decapitating"
their leadership, but this tactic almost never works; in the evolutionary hothouse
of war, killing a group’s leadership usually just leads to the rise of even
more radical and ruthless leaders. In the case of al Baghdadi, he rose to the
top of al Qaeda in Iraq when the United States killed the group’s top two leaders
in 2010. Although the group then focused its efforts on overthrowing Assad in
neighboring Syria, its financial base stayed in Iraq even though it changed
its name to Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). If Obama had poured greater
amounts of weapons to more moderate opposition groups in Syria, ISIS would probably
be even stronger today. In war, the most ruthless groups grab the weapons and
use them on everyone else. If doubt exists about this phenomenon, when ISIS
recently invaded Iraq, it disarmed the better-equipped Iraqi military and sent
it on the run. In its current air campaign against forces of the now renamed
IS, America is fighting its own weaponry.

So if we go back in history far enough, we reach a much different conclusion
than the interventionist politicians could fathom: George W. Bush’s original
interventionism has led to the Islamist radicalization of both Iraq and Syria.
More US intervention – as is happening now with air strikes to help the Kurds
against IS in Iraq – will only lead to more of the same. Usually implicit in
the interventionism of American politicians and policymakers is that US military
action will make things better wherever it is undertaken. The United States
has destabilized Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon with its invasion and occupation of
Iraq, has destabilized Afghanistan and Pakistan with its invasion and occupation
of Afghanistan, and has destabilized Libya and Mali (and helped create a terrorist
base in southern Libya with the weapons unleashed from Muammar Gaddafi’s storehouses)
after a U.S.-led coalition toppled Gaddafi in Libya. The United States has fueled
Islamist radicalism by also intervening militarily in Yemen and Somalia.

With such a great recent track record, one would think that American politicians
would be too embarrassed get re-involved militarily in Iraq. But they now think
they need to fight the monster that they created. But if IS is more ferocious
than its ancestor, al Qaeda in Iraq, what more formidable creature are they
now creating in opposition to US bombing?

Why can't idiots like Hillary Clinton get it through their thick skulls that, as Eland says, arming the Islamic forces arrayed against secular Assad was a terrible idea. Now she wants to double down and Obama is going along, dismissing the outrage of the American people that occurred a short year ago when Obama first publicly wanted to bomb Syria. What's that definition of insanity again?

Pete

"Idiots like Hillary Clinton"?. What a terrible thing to say about Idiots, comparing them to Hillary C.

By their twisted logic, the interventionists say that the reason Iraq ISIS (ISIL) has grown so strong is that WE DIDN'T DO ENOUGH in Iraq. We should have killed ALL the 'insurgents' while we were there. It's the same logic as Israel's extremists have with regard to GAZA–"finish the job—kill 'em ALL !!" is what they are saying. These people think, just like the Star Wars Empire, that they are 'the ultimate power in the universe" [or at least on Earth]. They have a rude awakening ahead of them (if they ever wake up).

Salem

What is happening in Iraq nowadays is a natural result of the west actions and policies against Iraq since the Gulf war I.The destruction of the retreating Iraqi,forces from Kuwait., the sanction and blockade of Iraq,the humiliating terms imposed on Iraq ,and the endless attacks,then the lies based invasion and occupation and destruction of the country,the rounding ups of thousands of Iraqis and systemic torture of Innocent people,the indiscriminate revenge shooting and executions cried by US forces against people who done nothing,American trained and supplied death squads that emptied Baghdad of its Sunni majority,and the millions who had to flee the country as a result of the US invasion and destructive occupation.And as usual ,Americans absolve themselves of any responsibilities and look for any other scapegoats for their actions and excuses to restart new wars.

If ISIS didn't exist we'd have to create something like it- the US has always needed an Emmanuel Goldberg in order to grease the wheels of state and industry.

I wonder if we will ever have a President who keeps us OUT of wars during his term?

Salem

The biggest American export has always been wars.

dermotgilley

"Americans are not known for placing importance on history" – that is actually a very pertinent remark: what ever the US' merits in intervening in the second world war, this was the only time if fought together with "the Russians" and not against them. But any other conflict, beginning right with the Korean conflict in the 1950s, the US has actually lost, each and every time. In Korea it was marching forward only to be beaten back to exactly where it started. In Vietnam it staged the Tonkin incident to have an excuse for intervening after first alienating the French (who later retaliated by humiliating Nixon and forcing him to take the dollar off the gold standard – q.v. today's monetary mess!), then lost that one too. In Iraq it first had Hussein poised as an ally against Iran (where it, once again, unsuccessfully intervened from the 1950s only to completely lose out in the 1980s finally), then set him up over Kuwait (remember: the US encouraged his intervention, then bombed him, but just not enough). then they thought he'd fall like rotten fruit, but he didn't. Then they intervened in this multi-ethnic state, like in Yugoslavia, and lost once again. And let's not even think about Afghanistan… Yes, there is good reason to forget "that" history.

redwood

ISIS is too extreme even for Al Qaeda. They are not too extreme for the USA. They caused the people there to create it. The USA, Britain, France and most other allies want an excuse to intervene.